Adrian Goldsworthy - Vindolanda

The high king stared at the animal as the rest yapped around his feet. His face was grim, until at last it softened and he took his fingers from around the puppy’s throat and tickled its stomach. He smiled and set the animal down.

‘The Stallion wishes only for flames and destruction, and for sacrifice.’

‘Samhain is near,’ Ferox said.

‘Then you have heard. He promises a great and terrible sacrifice and he promises much more, for he says that the souls of dead warriors will come into the world and fight alongside his followers, and that men sworn to do his bidding will not be pierced by any blade. He promises blood and fire. He promises war and I believe he is ready to start one and trusts that I will join him.’

‘And you will not?’

Tincommius turned and placed his hands on the centurion’s shoulders. It reminded Ferox of how short the man was, and also the hard assurance in his eyes.

‘I do not wish for a war,’ the high king said, emphasising each word. ‘It is up to you to make sure that I do not have to fight one. Get home, make the new legate of your province agree to friendship.’ Tincommius smiled as he displayed his knowledge. ‘I think you will find that the new governor has arrived. So seal our friendship with him and it will be better for us all. That is why I need to make sure that you get home, and that is why you will have an escort.’

GANNASCUS AND TWENTY of his men rode south with them. The Germans looked too big on the little ponies, but the animals had strength and stamina and they went at a good pace. With them also came Venutius, accompanied by a dozen warriors as well as Epaticcus, the son of the high king. It rained for the first few days with barely a break, and somehow that made the abandoned remains of the army’s old bases seem even more forlorn.

In their last meeting Crispinus had presented the high king with a gift of three hundred denarii, newly minted and shiny and bearing the image of Trajan. The gift was a token of esteem and friendship, and the centurion had not even known that the tribune had brought it with him. He had known about the sword, a new, perfectly balanced spatha, and was pleased at the evident joy with which Tincommius accepted it, and his immediate gift of it to Epaticcus. In return Ferox and the tribune were given horses, a couple of greys so similar that they might have been twins, and had by chance been born on the same day. Their names were Frost and Snow and they were a generous gift.

The high king had spoken frankly to them, his great hall almost empty apart from a few servants. Galla was there, standing tall behind the royal chair, but she did not acknowledge Ferox in any way. Tincommius told them that he feared that the Stallion meant to start a war. A year ago at least a thousand men served him, bearing his marks on their foreheads and hands, and now there were surely far more because men kept coming north to find him. Most were strangers to these lands, vagrants, dreamers and runaways – not warriors but filled with faith in his magic. The priest had gathered them all in a long-abandoned fort on the borders between the Venicones and Selgovae. There were thousands of them there a few weeks ago, and by now there might be many more, all daubing the mark of the horse on their heads.

‘It is a bleak spot, hard to access. I will no longer send food to him, and I do not know what stores he has. I doubt that he will stay there, for he must attack to show his strength.’ The king suspected that many true warriors, men from the tribes, would answer the call to war, and so might some chieftains. ‘Many more will come if victories show his magic to all.

‘You must stop him soon,’ he said, but the Stallion had left on the night of the feast and was more than a day ahead of them. ‘He can travel fast.’ With more reluctance, the high king explained that the druid had also gone, no one knew where.

They went at a good pace, but the sight of more than sixty heavily armed riders did not make villagers wary, for the presence of the Germans and the king’s son showed that they travelled with his blessing. People gave them food and shelter for the nights and talked freely. They spoke of the Stallion, who flitted about from place to place, appearing when least expected and telling men of the end of Rome and the cleansing fire that would soon sweep through the land. Even folk loyal to Tincommius were in awe of the priest’s powerful magic. Ferox spoke to one herdsmen and then repeated the story to Crispinus and Vindex.

‘They say that at the great feast the Stallion confronted the Roman envoys,’ he explained.

‘Well, there is truth enough in that,’ the tribune allowed.

‘They also say that he raised his hands in the air, calling on the gods, and struck all three Romans stone dead.’

Vindex grabbed his own left wrist and flopped the hand back and forth. ‘Should we still be moving about?’ he asked.

Crispinus was unsure whether to laugh or take it seriously. ‘How can we make the lie known? Tell the man that we are the envoys and we are as alive as he is.’

‘I already have,’ Ferox said. ‘But he wasn’t surprised. It seems that the great druid told the Stallion that the time was not yet ripe, and that he should respect the high king’s hearth and hospitality, so the priest raises his arms, prays a bit more, and restores us to life.’

Vindex puffed breath on to the palm of his hand and nodded with exaggerated pleasure.

‘Very kind of him, I must say,’ the tribune said. ‘But surely the fellow does not believe such nonsense?’

‘Maybe yes, maybe no,’ Ferox explained. ‘But someone told him the tale and he told us. Word is spreading.’

Next day they met a group of half a dozen men trudging along wrapped in their thick woollen cloaks. They had round shields, a couple of throwing spears on their shoulder, and were going to answer the priest’s call, even though they did not seem to know why. Epaticcus told them to go back home and with the big Gannascus looming over them they shuffled back along the track.

‘Probably double back as soon as we have gone,’ Vindex said and Ferox suspected that he was right.

There were more men the next day striding over the hills to the south as little groups or individuals, but all going in the same direction.

On the fourth day the skies cleared for a few hours, and a pale sun without warmth beamed down on them. An hour after dawn on the next day, the rain started and lasted throughout the day, now and again turning to sleet. They were cold and wet, but by the end of the day they reached the ferry and were taken across the river.

It was hailing as they crossed, the sluggish waters pocked with splashes. Ferox felt his face stinging from the blows. The people in the houses on the south bank were nervous, reluctant to talk, and they discovered the cause an hour later. At first they saw only the outline of the great yew tree, standing alone on the low ridge above the track leading south. When they got closer they saw the overturned cart, blackened and smouldering, the remains of a fire under the boughs of the tree and the two bodies hanging down from the branches. One of the men wore a Roman tunic, the dull white wool slashed and stained dark with blood from where they had sliced at him with knives as he slowly choked to death from the noose around his neck.

The other corpse was naked, and hung upside down, the rope around his ankles, his head downwards so that it was held just above the fire lit under the tree. He would not have been in the flames but kept in their heat, and Ferox imagined the men who had done this sitting and listening to his screams.

‘I hope the poor fellow was dead when they did that to him,’ Crispinus said, staring in horror at the corpse, the head burst open and its scorched contents in the fire.